The Brew - 'What I Want' mix

[The_Metallurgist]

This sounds very good albeit very middle of the road.

Thanks so much for your critique, however, I'm sorry but I was looking for a critique from someone who has experience.

i have lots of experience in making decent coffee....will that suffice?

picking up some noise on the RHS during the intro. i like the delays, but perhaps they are a little cliche? some sound shaping to add texture to them might help make the intro more sonically appealing? if the intro is cliche, then it suggests the rest of the song might be too.....and do i want to stay around or simply skip, kind of thing? those first few seconds are crucial for getting your audience to stick, yeah? i'd also filter out some of the mid on them....helps keep the guitar clean. you could also embrace this same idea with the BV's too, keep them away from the lead on the center and minimise congestion.

drums from the drummer's perspective....it looks silly on TV, eh? the floor tom punches one side of the cans...perhaps unload some of it's weight into the mid and pull it more towards 20 percent'ish? oh, now it's getting irritating, it's used more than once! you could always get creative and mute the rest of it The ride is too shouty and fatiguing - it's especially fatiguing because there's nothing to balance it's brightness in the other channel, so it needs care.

the mp3 is clipping....perhaps back off your limiter before feeding it into the encoder.

this sounds like a fairly static mix, with little in the way of dynamic variation, especially between verse and chorus? i'd consider ways of differentiating the two so your chorus has more impact and emotional appeal. even narrowing the sound stage during the verse, then opening it up for the chorus would leave more of an impression, for example. a change in level or fiddling with the frequencies with a little more treble than the verse would give an illusion of increased loudness without touching the fader/automating. you could also consider changing the depth in some way. but do something different, eh?

i'm not convinced by the 20 foot wide piano in this song. subjective? could be.

the sibilance in the LV needs some attention. i'm not aufait with the raw goods, but i suspect the vocal was fairly well compressed during tracking, if only to make the microphone sound more appealing than perhaps it really is (common strategy with mic salesman). i'm hearing some distortion in his vocal which is giving me some clues...and i'm wondering if you've added even more compression to it? this would certainly draw additional sibilance into your mix.

the kick's fundamental isn't working here, and you've given priority to the bass guitar instead. i don't know if this helps, but i work the kick and the bass guitar first in the loudest part of the song....and this sets the headroom and levels against which all other instruments will be based. so the kick and the bass guitar can be EQ'd to work well together. if you're using reflex/ported monitors, it will be a lot more challenging. maybe this is why the harmonic of the kick has been exposed instead, simply because you can hear it better? it means you've lost it's weight and some of the drama and drive along with it, sadly. sidechaining simply distracts from doing a proper job in the first place.

on the master, i'd clear out some of the low-mids in the side channel. it will help make the song lighter and more responsive, especially in the stereo domain. pulling out some 350Hz with a Q to suit (let your ears be the judge of the actual values) will work wonders. if you fixed the sibilance, the mix could be slowly rolled off from about 7kHz with a 6dB/octave filter. it would make the song a lot more comfortable......but if your ears are used to the brightness, any reduction from where you are currently, will likely seem too much. depends how truthful your monitoring is; assuming your hearing isn't impaired.

hope this helps
i enjoyed listening, thanks for the opportunity

Dave